Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Color Infusion

Future house guests will be happy to hear, the tile in our shower is being set as we speak! This project has been a long time coming, that's for sure.

The tilesetter heading up the job is Wes, and Mario is helping. Andrew is working alongside. Uh oh.

The tile was mostly acquired from Fireclay tile factory in San Jose. Fireclay is like a candy store to us, though a lot dustier and without the pleasant aromas.

We head straight for the "boneyard," the yard where they store seconds or leftovers. We like the serendipity and randomness of combining colors. We've always found it hard to narrow down our choices to one or two colors, and this has been a perfect solution. It starts out sounding like a great way to save money, but by the third time you go back for just one or two more colors, it gets a little crazy. `The theme for the shower is a water column, a theme that runs through a lot of Andrew's work. Gaudi is a major inspiration obviously.

The walls are layed out on the floor at the moment:

Since the space is small, we decided to tile the ceiling too out of lighter blues, in a smaller tile, to represent the feeling of looking up at the sky through the water.

Wes is setting it RIGHT NOW:

The arched opening has become known as the "soap shrine". We haven't entirely figured out the layout for that, but have a lot of ideas and a good starting point:

We also have some surprises up our sleeves...decorated "relief" tiles. Fireclay had just put out a bunch of really beautiful pieces when we got there. The artist who designs the tile, Joy, came out and met us, and even brought out more of our favorites once she heard what we liked. These will be worked in whereever possible, if not in the shower, then in the general vicinity:

I can't even keep up with the job. They've already finished the ceiling and are almost done with the floor.

They snuck in a pelican tile:

This is the layout for the floor, which they just finished.

I'd show you the finished floor, but my camera battery just ran out. I'll be recharged and back with more soon.